Newsletter

Photos capture grit, heart of Rio slum

A family in one of the highest, poorest areas of the Rio favela, which is at the greatest risk for mudslides.

A young man balances several dozen eggs atop a box as he rides as passenger on the back of a motorcycle negotiating one of Rocinha’s few wider roadways. Because of the narrow alleys, the preferred form of travel around the favela is motorbike, sometimes with as many as five people on a single bike.

A family living on the bottom floor of a building far into the Rocinha favela’s web of narrow, winding alleys, opens a window to see what the commotion is and what got their dog to barking as Smith, Stern and Beltran arrive with their baggage. Although most of the buildings appear grim from the exterior, many homes are comfortable and fashionably furnished.

A typical chaotic street scene in Rocinha where exposed electrical wiring is common.

A young mother and her son share a moment looking out of their favela home.

LAWRENCE — Last November, University of Kansas alumnus and videographer-photographer Carlos Beltran received a call from Gary Mark Smith, a street photographer based in Lawrence.

Smith had heard about Beltran's project to document life in the slums of Caracas, Venezuela, with photographs and film and wanted to tell him about his idea to capture images of everyday life in Rocinha, a gang-run favela built into the side of a mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

"Typically, I work alone, but I wanted to mentor Carlos," said Smith, 55, a KU alumnus who is known internationally for his photographs that capture candid moments in public places.

Beltran, 25, a Venezuela native who came to Atwood at age 17 as an exchange student and then earned a journalism degree at KU, and Smith began making plans to travel to Rocinha. Joining the project a few months later was 19-year-old Sarah Stern, a strategic communications major at KU whom Smith has mentored for the past several years.

Stern, a KU Global Scholar who started her own photography business at age 15, speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently and has traveled extensively, including trips to Paraguay, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil.

"My way of returning to a trip is through the photographs," she said. "Years later, I can feel the emotion and remember the situations."

The trip to Rocinha would require living three weeks with host families in the favela — from May 20 to June 9 — and documenting day-to-day life. While they anticipated seeing members of the favela’s gang-led army carrying guns on the streets, the trio didn't expect a face-to-face encounter with the gang lord who rules the urbanized slum of more than 100,000.

ON THE STREET

Built into a mountainous hillside, poverty-stricken Rocinha is made up of concrete or brick houses two to three stories high, built close enough to each other that one can reach out a window and give an item to a resident living in another building.

Power lines are strung haphazardly among the buildings so residents can siphon electricity from the Rio utility service. On windy days, it's not uncommon to see kites being flown from windows or the rooftops.

"There was incredible noise," Stern said. "At any hour, there were three or four different types of music. If you go on the rooftops, you could hear other people talking because the buildings are so close."

Roosters crowed early each morning. Cars and motorcycles made their way through the crowded streets as people went about their work. Beltran said he was surprised how "touristy" the favela had become. For about $50, he said, a person could take a short walk through the slum.

On the street, Stern saw men playing checkers, children kicking soccer balls and women walking arm in arm. Taking photographs of them, however, could be a challenge at times because residents were unsure how the images would be used or if they would be portrayed negatively.

Stern said that was never her intent, or that of Smith and Beltran.

"The goal of my photography is to show things in the most beautiful way — looking into someone's eyes and seeing that glimmer of happiness," she said.

One day, as Smith was taking photographs, his camera was confiscated and taken to the gang lord. The next day or so, he was summoned to meet with the gang lord. Smith insisted Stern accompany him because she spoke Portuguese and could serve as his interpreter.

After a discussion about their project, Smith said the gang lord returned his camera. A day or so later, his lens was returned.

"The three of us saw close-up the less unpredictable side of the gang and its leader and its bureaucracy and perhaps even saw a small light at the end of the tunnel," he said.

"Our job was to get time on the genuine Rocinha streets with our cameras and to capture the essence of that everyday place despite authoritative sanctions, or as occurred at the end of the shoot, more easily with gang blessings."

Smith said the trip to Rocinha will result in a book and movie. The book will contain 30 photos from each Smith and Stern and images submitted by students in a photography class Smith taught while in Rocinha. The movie, filmed by Beltran using a Sony Handycam on loan from KU, is a documentary about the making of the book.

WHAT LIES AHEAD

In addition to the Rocinha book and movie, Stern, Beltran and Smith have several individual projects in the works.

Stern will attend classes at KU this fall and then travel in December to Paraguay, where she will take photographs and develop a strategic communications plan as part of an internship with Fundacion Paraguaya, a nongovernmental organization that promotes entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency among the poor. She also hopes to travel to Brazil to dance at the Carnival and revisit Rocinha.

Beltran, who makes music and commercial videos for such clients as Revlon International and Yellow Cab Co., recently moved back to Venezuela and is finishing his photo book and film about the slums in Caracas. The film, with the working title "The Slum Culture," is expected to be finished in November and entered into various film festivals in spring 2012.

Smith, who hopes to return to Brazil in 2014 for the World Cup and a Rocinha, visit will be exhibiting 27 prints in his "Streetphotos in Time" series September through January at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications on the KU campus. The prints are of war zones, volcanic eruptions and other global catastrophes since 1982.

He has been asked by the George Eastman House to contribute a framed print to its 2012 History of Photography auction through Sotheby's in October in New York City. In addition, the Spencer Research Library at KU has established a Gary Mark Smith Collection as part of its Kansas Collection. The archive consists of his research, personal papers and letters, original signed prints and negatives produced in 60 countries between 1981 and 2005.